Moving Day (12 page)

Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls #1:
Moving Day

Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls #2:
The New Girl

Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls #3:
Best Friends and Drama Queens

Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls #4:
Stage Fright

Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls #5:
Glitter Girls and the Great Fake Out

FOR TEENS

Airhead

Being Nikki

Runaway

All-American Girl

Ready or Not

Teen Idol

How to Be Popular

Pants on Fire

Jinx

Nicola and the Viscount

Victoria and the Rogue

The Princess Diaries series

The Mediator series

1-800-Where-R-You series

Avalon High series

For a complete list of Meg Cabot’s books, please visit www.megcabot.com

• Don’t stick a spatula down your best friend’s throat.
  
• Everything that goes up must come down.
  
• Don’t let go of helium balloons outside.
  
• Treat your friends the way you’d want them to treat you.
  
• Never eat anything red.
  
• Always wear a helmet when you’re skateboarding because if a car hits you, your brain will splat open, and kids like me will spend their time waiting for the cars to go by so they can cross the street looking for bits of your brain the ambulance might have left behind in the bushes.
  
• Don’t get a pet that poops in your hand.
  
• Don’t scare your little brothers.
  
• If you don’t want a secret spread around, don’t tell it to Scott Stamphley.
  
• You should only say nice things to your friends, even if they’re not true.
  
• Brothers—and parents—can be very insensitive.
  
• You’re not supposed to hate people, especially grown-up people.
  
• It doesn’t count if it doesn’t hurt.
  
• You can’t let your family move into a haunted house.
  
• If someone is yelling from excitement, the polite thing to do is yell back.
  
• Whatever Brittany Hauser says, just do it if you know what’s good for you.
  
• Never be catcher when Brittany Hauser is up to bat.
  
• Licorice is gross.
  
• You can never make a second first impression.
  
• It’s not polite to correct a grown-up.
  
• Don’t put your cat in a suitcase.
  
• Listen politely when a grown-up is telling you something, even if you already know it.
  
• You can’t let your guests starve.
  
• When you do something wrong, always apologize (even if it’s not entirely your fault)—you can always explain later.
  
• If you get a new best friend, it’s rude to show off about it.
  
• Say thank you when someone gives you a compliment even if you aren’t sure it’s a compliment.
  
• Pretend like you don’t care when someone is insulting you, and don’t cry. That way, you win.
  
• Sometimes (but not always) it’s better just to keep things to yourself.
  
• When you finally figure out what the right thing to do is, you have to do it, even if you don’t want to.
  
• When you are setting a turtle free and people are chasing you, the best thing to do is hide.
  
• You can’t take your rocks with you.
  
• Celebrities live by a different set of rules than the rest of us.
  
• Even if someone gives you something that you don’t really want, you should still say thank you—if it is something they meant kindly.
  
• Don’t judge a house by how it looks before you fix it up.
  
• Don’t be a braggart.
  

“Here we are,” Mom said, showing up with Kevin just as Erica and I were about to walk out the door.

Erica and I looked at Kevin. He was still wearing black pants, black boots, and a white shirt with long puffy sleeves. Mom had gotten him to give up his red sash, skull and crossbones hat, eye patch, and sword.

“At least she could have let me keep my eye patch,” Kevin said, looking sad.

“You look really good,” Erica assured him.

“Why don’t you just put on normal clothes?” I asked him. It’s a pain having such a weird brother. Between him and Mark, I sometimes wonder how I got so cursed in the big sister department.

“
You’re
wearing jeans with a skirt,” Kevin pointed out.

“I don’t want boys to see my underwear in case I hang upside down from the jungle gym,” I explained.

“Well, I want everyone to know I’m a pirate,” Kevin said.

“They will,” Erica assured him.

“Okay,” Mom said in a very fake cheerful voice as she appeared with her coat and purse. “Are we ready to walk to school together?”

I could see now that Mark had been smart to run ahead with those boys.
There is nothing wrong with walking to school with your mom and dad on your first day. Except everything.
Which is a rule, by the way.

Or it will be when I write it in my special notebook that I keep in my room for writing rules in.

“We can walk by ourselves,” I said quickly.

“What about Kevin?” Mom asked.

“Oh, we’ll be happy to walk Kevin, Mrs. Finkle,” Erica said, taking Kevin’s hand.

I didn’t know about that. I mean, no one asked me. I wasn’t happy to walk Kevin to school.

But it was better than having my
parents
walk to school with us.

“Sure,” I said, taking Kevin’s other hand. “We’ll walk Kevin.”

“Okay,” Dad said. He had on his own coat. “You girls walk Kevin. And we’ll walk behind you and pretend we don’t know you. How’s that?”

This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. But it was better than nothing.

“Okay,” I muttered.

Erica and I steered Kevin through the door. Outside, the leaves, which had already started changing colors, were beginning to fall from the trees and blanket the sidewalk. It was also cold.

“How come you don’t want to walk to school with your parents?” Erica wanted to know. “I think they’re funny.”

“They’re not so funny,” I assured her, “once you get to know them.”

“Having popcorn for breakfast is funny,” Erica said. “My dad would never do that. And letting your brother wear a pirate costume to his first day of school is funny. Even wearing a skirt with jeans is kind of funny—even though it looks really good.”

I thought about what Erica said. I didn’t think it was true. The Finkles weren’t funny. The truth was, Finkles were actually exceptionally talented. Especially my uncle Jay, whom Erica hadn’t even met yet because he lived in his own apartment on campus. He was probably the most talented Finkle of all. He could bend one of his toes so far back, it touched the top of his foot. Plus, he had double-jointed thumbs.

I wished I had special skills like that. If I did, I wouldn’t have any trouble at all making friends at my brand-new school, or have to wear a special skirt that twirled in order to get people to like me.
If you have special skills or talents, such as having double-jointed thumbs, other people will automatically like you right away
(that’s a rule).

It’s true that Erica liked me. But she hadn’t asked me to be best friends, or anything. Probably a skirt that twirled wasn’t going to influence her decision one way or another. But I had to do what I could.

When we were halfway to the school and had reached the stop sign at the first (completely non-busy) street we had to cross to get to Pine Heights, I noticed there were two girls walking toward us from the other direction. Erica said, “Oh, look! It’s Caroline and Sophie.”

And it was.

“Oh, my gosh, it’s your first day,” Sophie yelled, jumping up and down when she saw me. “This is so exciting!”

“I know,” I yelled back. Because
When someone is yelling at you with excitement, it’s polite to yell back.
This is a rule. “I’m so nervous! I have butterflies!”

“Don’t be nervous,” Caroline said. She was the first one to stop jumping. I was starting to realize this because Caroline is actually quite serious. “Just be yourself. Is this your little brother? Why is he dressed that way?”

“Because I’m a pirate,” Kevin informed her.

Caroline looked from Kevin to me.

“He’s in kindergarten,” I explained with a shrug.

“Are those your
parents
?” Sophie whispered, noticing my parents hanging around behind us. They waved, and Sophie and Caroline waved politely back.

“Just ignore them,” I said, pulling on Kevin to get us moving along again.

“They wanted to walk Allie and Kevin to school today,” Erica explained. “But Allie wouldn’t let them, so now they’re just following us.”

“Aw,” Sophie said. “That’s so cute!”

“Allie’s dad made them popcorn for breakfast,” Erica said. I could tell she was enjoying herself, talking about how funny the Finkles were. This was turning out to be one of her favorite subjects. “Because he couldn’t find any cereal bowls!”

“You’re not supposed to tell anyone about the popcorn,” I reminded her. “Or, at least, not any teachers.”

“That’s okay,” Caroline said. “One time we ran out of sandwich meat, so my dad just made us mustard sandwiches. They weren’t very good. My parents are divorced,” she explained. “And my big sister and I live with my dad. It can be hard sometimes.”

“It must be,” I said sympathetically.

“My dad’s a really good cook,” Sophie said. “Last night for dinner he made us spaghetti Bolognese. My dad does all the cooking in our family, because my mom is working on her dissertation. And besides, she’s a terrible cook. She burned potpourri once.”

“You can’t burn potpourri,” Caroline said.

“Yes, you can,” Sophie said. “If you go to the mall and leave it simmering on the stove, the water in it evaporates, and then the potpourri smolders, and then the smoke detector goes off, and the neighbors call the fire department. It was so embarrassing.”

I appreciated what Caroline and Sophie were trying to do—make the butterflies in my stomach go away.

And it was kind of working. Almost all the butterflies in my stomach had disappeared.

Before I knew it, even though we hadn’t been walking particularly fast, our feet were tromping on the dead leaves that lined Pine Heights Elementary’s playground. I could hear the shrieks of encouragement as kids (including my brother Mark) played kick ball while waiting for the first bell to ring. I could see people on the swings pumping their legs to go higher and higher. I saw clusters of other kids just standing around, doing nothing but looking at other kids looking at them (which included me).

That’s when the butterflies in my stomach came right back. In fact, they turned from butterflies into great big swooping bats banging around inside me. Because I couldn’t help thinking, what if none of those kids on the playground liked me? What if the only people who talked to me all day were Erica, Caroline, and Sophie? Which would be okay…but I didn’t want them to get sick of me, not on my first day. Then I’d have a whole year of no one liking me but those three. That would be terrible! I mean, for them.

It was right then that something truly awful happened.

Kevin let go of my hand and also Erica’s and ran toward the jungle gym, I guess because he saw some kids his own age playing on it.

To me Kevin just looked normal. I mean, the fact is, he wears his pirate costume all the time, such as to the grocery store, to story hour at the library, and to Dairy Queen for his favorite cone, vanilla twist butterscotch dip, which he is always careful not to spill on his red sash.

But I heard some of the kids standing in a cluster nearby—they were girls, big girls, too, maybe fifth-grade girls—start to laugh. When I looked over at them, I saw that they were laughing…at Kevin! That had to be what they were laughing at, because they were looking right at him.

They were laughing at my brother.

And then they looked over at me. Then they started whispering to one another. Which meant they could only be whispering about me. But why? What was
I
doing wrong?
I
wasn’t wearing pirate pants and boots beneath my down parka.

Then I remembered: I was wearing a skirt with jeans. I’d insisted on wearing a skirt with jeans, in spite of the fact that my mom had tried to talk me out of it.

Oh, this was terrible!

And that’s when it hit me. Maybe what Erica had said was really true—the Finkles
were
funny. Maybe the Finkles were
too
funny…too funny to fit into someplace new. Like a new school…a new neighborhood…a new anywhere.

Oh, why had I let my parents talk me into moving? Why had I let them convince me to start at a new school, where I didn’t really know anyone and where people might think Finkles were funny?

And why—why, oh, why—had I worn a skirt with jeans on my very first day at my brand-new school?

…And here are some of

• When you are starting your first day ever at a brand-new school, you have to wear something good, so people will think you’re nice.
  
• Things can’t get worse.
  
• There is nothing wrong with walking to school with your mom and dad on your first day. Except everything.
  
• When someone decides she’s going to beat you up, the best thing to do is hide.
  
• Friends – and queens – don’t let each other get beaten up.
  
• Pretending like you have things under control and actually having things under control are two very different things.
  
• If you say it enough times in your head, it will come true (sometimes).
  
• Cats don’t care what color their collar is.